


A View from a Crumbing Pane

by CharismaticEnticer



Series: The End of You, The End of Me [2]
Category: Die Anstalt
Genre: (best friend called it that), (whatever that means), Break Up Talk, Canon Disabled Character, Endings, F/M, Literary Story, POV Third Person, Paranoia, Post-Break Up, Post-Relationship, Present Tense, Regrets, Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticEnticer/pseuds/CharismaticEnticer
Summary: They’re almost at the zenith, so it makes sense to clear the air now. They won’t exactly have a better time to do it.
Relationships: Dolly/Kroko
Series: The End of You, The End of Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1987900
Kudos: 1





	A View from a Crumbing Pane

**Author's Note:**

> It would be a lie to say that this is about anything in particular, but nor will I say I didn't have one in mind while writing this. Hopefully it should be accessible to some degree either way? I know a few people thought me too pretentious last time, so I need to fix my image.
> 
> Die Anstalt © Martin Kittsteiner.

She curls more tightly into herself at the sound and rubs her arms, trying in some impossible way to get rid of the chill seeping through her skin far deeper than is reasonable. Apart from it hurting, it clashes with all she's supposed to know - everything the radio, her doctor, anyone with supposed heads on their shoulders told her says that it should be hot inside _and_ out. She shouldn't be shivering right now.

Maybe she's just that messed that her temperature gauge got scrambled. Or maybe they were lying.

A tiny part of her still hopes to god they were lying.

Sadly, the outside world isn't matching her already-pointless assertion any more than the inside. Orange and red zigzag the sky, rising and falling through each other, with only splotches of dark to cut through the close contact. It almost looks like a sunset come too suddenly, or like that one time she spilled the watercolour wash all over the bed and set off another of his episodes. (If only a spin cycle could take care of _her_ so easily.)

The sketch of a memory overlaps what she sees with a sharp pain, and she realizes there's something else the view reminds her of. Her kindergarten had walls very like this, didn't it? Just before she had to leave it at least. Everyone chipped in to repaint it, she gets a glimmer of that; the smell of primer and oil made her nauseous in those days. It even had the shadows to boast, though these were of her disparate half-hearted friends as she said goodbye to them for the last time. As black, as vague in the end through the tears and the yelling, but perhaps not near as... intact?

It sounds again; she chuckles hoarsely. Guess the connection makes a grim degree of sense right now. 

After all, her life ended there.

"[Do you see anything?]"

She knows who that is without turning - he's always snuck in like that, for a start, silent as silk. No idea how he does it. "[Nothing I haven't already seen,]" she calls back to him. "[I don't think, anyway.]"

She can picture the way he's moving now, the bobbing of his throat, the pulling thereof. "[Not even the Eyes?]"

"[Nah.]"

"[It feels like the kind of--]"

"[I know, but there's no Eyes. Promise.]"

"[Good!]" The relieved, glisteny look. "[Good. It - we can't have Eyes too right now. Not with...]" And its trailing off along with him.

"[I know.]"

She shifts the focus from her arm to the curls atop her; it's not warming up any time soon, so she might as well untangle what few knots she still has while she's sitting here. Or are they simply bristling from the gaze boring into her back? Or above - just to check she's -?

No. She knows what she sees. She knows what they were told. And if he can't trust her now...

She double checks, just the same. And if there _is_ something blinking faster than sound beyond the pane, she doesn't call attention to it.

Instead, she fills the silence after a very familiar crackle: "[Hon, you remember when they put that Christmas tree up? The doctors, I mean.]"

"[The tr-? Oh! You mean when we first-?]"

"[That's the one. Right _behind_ the tree, even.]"

He hums a doubt; "[I thought it was in the closet. Cus we almost set off that alarm, right?]"

"[That had nothing to do with that... still, could've been. You'd remember better than me.]" (She doesn't mean that to sound so sardonic, so - hateful. But it's too late to change the tone. Too late for much.) "[B- but the tree, though,]" she carries on hastily, "[they ended up not taking it down the month after. Nor the month after that. And we thought--]"

"[That it was a sign!]" he cries. A faint clap, or is it a spark? "[That _we'd_ last if _that_ old thing did. And we - well. I suppose...]"

"[Guess we did.]"

"[Longer... longer than the lights on it, anyway. Even longer than that time in the dark hole - and that,]" he points out, "[was a long time. Or, um. Felt like it.]"

A huff almost comes forth, hastily suppressed. He would think about the dark hole at a time like this, wouldn't he?

After all, his life ended there. 

(That is, if the dreams he has and the places he hides afterwards are to be believed.)

"[Anyway, if you're...]" she hears once more. "[I'll. I'll leave you to, I guess I'll leave--]"

"[No. Hey.]" The footsteps out of the room don't stop - but did they ever start? Or was that her tapping the empty space beside her? Another almost involuntary act, more so than offsetting the icicles ever could be. "[C'mere. It feels like... feels like you ought to be up here.]"

"[A- are you sure?]" he squeaks.

"[I'm sure.]"

"[But the... you know...?]"

Ah, she hadn't thought of that. "[W- I mean - they're not going to mind. Promise.]"

"[...if you say so.]" And he takes a faltering breath, and the beginnings of a tentative step - then another of each - then as many more as it takes to get him through the corpses and reach her on the other side of the room. Their arms, hers now slack, brush against each other when he lowers himself down; a blush may be tinging his face, finally visible against everything else, once he notices.

May. It's hard to tell, with the sky being what it is.

Electricity surges; the light dims abruptly, a strong signal that it's not coming back this time. It only adds to the confusion swirling inside her: the light of liquid copper splashes onto him, dappling against dark, and he's neither looked more terrifying nor more beautiful in the moment. On her part, she swallows a lump. 

"[Listen, I'm. I'm sorry about everything. About all the--]"

"[Did you ever love me?]"

She falters - "[the-th.]" That's not where she was going to take that... 

It looks like he can tell that, too, because he's starting to backtrack. "[I didn't - th- this isn't a good time to talk about that. Is it?]"

"[No, it's not... but when _will_ it be time, eh?]" Might as well roll with this, if only so he doesn't go with regrets. Any more than he already has...

Another shadow passes across the two.

"[It's not that I never loved you,]" she begins, speaking as carefully as he walked just moments before. "[It's not even like I don't love you now. Just. It's not the kind of love you deserve from me, you know? Not truly. It was - _it's_ \- the selfish kind, I think; the kind that takes and doesn't bother to give.]"

"[You did give, though. You gave me you, and that's enough.]"

Another humourless laugh. "[You've been told 'enough' for you is basically nothing all your life! Anyone can _not_ push you away when you want hugs or _not_ yell at you when you wake up screaming. Hell, everyone here did that much!]"

"[Not everyone,]" he mutters, looking backwards.

"[Everyone that - hey, look at me - everyone that matters. It's about giving you more than that, being the best me I can be for you, and...]" She shakes her head. "[And I just can't be that. Not like you need.]"

"[So _you're_ telling me what enough is too.]"

She's already answered with "[It's not--]" before she twigs that it wasn't a question. 

"[I'm sorry.]" Already, the stone cold is fading from his tone and his eyes. "[I didn't mean that - it's everything. It's being with you, here, _now_ , knowing it's all--]"

"[I get it. Knowing all that time with me was a waste.]"

"[No no no,]" he overrides her guilt with one of his wide all-encompassing gestures, "[that's just it. It wasn't! Nothing about it was. It was still being in the closet or behind the tree or wherever we were, sharing our nightmares and stuff, trying not to hurt each other, and it's never stopped being that just because y- we - _we're_ stopping. You don't think it was the best, okay, but it's what we had anyway. _You_ were what I had. And. And like I said, that's enough for me.]"

Odd - she doesn't feel near so cold now. She finds the strength to smile to him, to act a little closer to normal. "[Sweet as ever, I see.]"

"[Heh, yeah. Did - had a lot of practice...]" 

And then they remember, in spite of everything, and the air changes in an instant.

"[...don't suppose that matters now, though.]"

"[No.]" A serious effort not to sigh. "[It doesn't.]"

She can no longer look at him, and yet neither is anything else a pleasant sight to see; her vision drifts to black in an effort to dissuade the decision. A few seconds on, a heavy, wet presence is on her shoulder - a similar quandary for him, it seems. She lets him. Where's the harm in it?

Eventually, her eyelids burn, and she settles on finding what's out there anew. It doesn't help. 

"[I told them this was coming.]"

Him too, then. "[I know.]"

"[I _told_ them,]" he insists. "[The black day, the One that Claws, all the insides coming out - I saw all of it! I just... they just didn't believe me. And now--]"

"[I know, hon. I believed you.]" She didn't - never did, until the evidence spread vast and wide and in a way that was impossible to ignore - but she's not going to break his world. Not now.

"[They should have believed me... I'm sorry.]"

She moves back into him, best as she's able. "[Not your fault. None of this is your fault, okay? I promise.]" And _that's_ not a lie. "[If anything...]"

Uh-oh. Now it's hot. Her skin rumbles with the beginnings of an itch that threatens to pierce. Yet more sounds beyond the veil of the glass - red on red on red.

"[Almost here,]" she says.

"[G- guess it is. ...Do you want to say-?]"

"[Not to you.]" Uttered much too quickly. "[Makes it - final. I kind of can't - I need this not to be final, you know?]"

"Nein, ja, [that's what I was thinking.]"

"[What about you?]"

"[I can't say it if you don't.]" She wants to insist that sure he can, that she's not the grand ruler of these things, but she lets it pass. "[Or are you talking about-?]"

"[Yeah.]"

"[...then no. I can't scream this time. It'll hurt too much,]" he says meekly. "[Hurt you. ...maybe we can just...?]"

"[We can. Let's.]" 

"Okay." And he pulls her in ever more, ever closer, wrapping an arm around her shuddering skittering form. "Okay. Okay."

She tries to relax, finds it comes easier than she expected - now that they're so near. There's enough space, maybe, to settle a thought. Of course they all want it to be different this time.

After all...

They curl more tightly, stare through the window, and wait for the next oblivion.


End file.
